1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for recording and/or reproducing optical information on and/or from an optical card and particularly relates to an apparatus comprising exchangeable controlling system units, which are for setting an operational mode of the apparatus, and a driving system unit, which is for relatively driving an optical head and an optical card with respect to each other in response to an output of one of the controlling system units, the controlling system units being exchanged by a user in accordance with a type of optical card to be used. Therefore, in the apparatus according to the invention it is possible to apply a plurality optical cards, each of them having a different arrangement of the information recording area.
2) Description of the Related Art
On an optical information recording medium such as an optical card, it is impossible to rewrite optical information, which has already been written thereon. However, the optical card has a great memory capacity, i.e., about several thousand times to ten thousand times as large as that of a magnet card. The optical card has a memory capacity of about from one to two megabytes, so that a great number of applications such as a bankbook, a pocket map and a prepaid card for shopping can be considered.
On the optical card, there are arranged a plurality of information tracks in a straight and parallel manner in a given area of the surface thereof. In the apparatus for recording/reproducing optical information using an optical card as an information recording medium, it is arranged that a light beam spot is made incident upon the information track area formed on the surface of the optical card, and then the optical card and the optical head are relatively moved with respect to each other in a track direction, which is parallel with an extending direction of the information tracks, to record and/or reproduce optical information on and/or from the optical card. In such an apparatus, it is further arranged that the optical card and the optical head are relatively moved to each other in a tracking direction, which is perpendicular to the track direction, to place the light beam spot on a desired information track.
In such an apparatus, the optical card is reciprocally moved with respect to the optical head in the track direction while generally being contained in a container, a so called "shuttle"; on the other hand, the optical head, by which the light beam spot is made incident upon the information track area of the optical card, is driven with respect to the optical head in the tracking direction.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a general construction of a conventional apparatus for recording and/or reproducing optical information on and/or from an optical card.
As shown in FIG. 1, the conventional apparatus comprises a shuttle 1 for containing an optical card; a shuttle driving means 2 for moving the shuttle 1 in the track direction for a given distance at a given constant speed in a reciprocal manner; an optical head 3 for making a light beam spot incident upon the information track area formed on the optical card; an optical head control means 4 for driving the optical head 3 in the tracking direction and controlling a light intensity of the light beam emitted from the optical head 3 in accordance with an operation mode of the apparatus, i.e., information recording mode or information reproducing mode; a driving section control means 5 for controlling the movements of the shuttle 1 and the optical head 3; and an internal control means 6 for controlling the driving section control means 5 and for reading out information picked up by the optical head 3 and/or writing optical information on the information tracks via the optical head control means 4. Further, an external control means 7 is connected to the apparatus; operations in the apparatus are performed in accordance with signals supplied from the external control means 7.
The operation of the conventional apparatus is as in the following.
In an initial condition of the apparatus, in response to a signal supplied from the external control means 7, the internal control means 6 sends commands to the driving section control means 5 and the optical head control means 4, respectively, to relatively move the optical head 3 and the shuttle 1 containing the optical card therein in the track and tracking directions and to recognize the position of the optical head with respect to the optical card. That is to say, the shuttle 1 is driven in the tracking direction in a reciprocal manner in response to a signal supplied from the driving section control means 5 via the shuttle driving means 2, and a light beam emitted from the optical head 3 traces one of the information tracks formed on the optical card by the movement of the shuttle 1; and then the internal control means 6 reads out a track address of the information track traced by the light beam to recognize the position of the optical head 3 with respect to the optical card.
The operation of the conventional apparatus when recording and/or reproducing optical information on and/from a specific track of the tracks formed on the optical card is as follows.
A desired track is sought in the following manner. Track address information of the desired track is supplied to the internal control means 6 from the external control means 7; and then the internal control means 6 sends track address information to the driving section control means 5. In the driving section control means 5, an optical head control signal is output to the optical head control means 4, firstly; the optical head control means 4 produces an optical head driving signal to the optical head 3 to move the optical head 3 on the desired track in response to the optical head control signal. Second, the driving section control means 5 sends a shuttle control signal to the shuttle driving means 2; the shuttle driving means 2 generates a shuttle driving signal to drive the shuttle for a given distance at a given constant speed in response to the shuttle control signal. Meanwhile, the internal control means 6 reads out track information of the relevant track via the optical head control means 4. If track address information of the relevant track read out thereby is different from a track address of the desired track, the above mentioned operation is repeated until the optical head 3 is positioned on the desired track.
When recording information on the specific track of the optical card, the internal control means 6 sends a signal representing an information recording mode to the driving section control means 5; and then the driving section control means 5 provides a signal representing that the next operation is for recording information to the container driving means 2 and the optical head control means 4, respectively. In response to this signal, the shuttle driving means 2 serves to reciprocally drive the shuttle 1 in the track direction for a given distance at a given constant speed, while, the optical head control means 4 serves to change a light intensity of the light beam emitted from the optical head 3 to an intensity for recording information. The internal control means 6 outputs information to be recorded, which is sent from the external control means 7, to the optical head 3 via the optical head control means 4; then the light beam spot emitted from the optical head 3 traces the relevant information track on the optical card with the aid of the movement of the shuttle 1, so that information is recorded on the optical card.
When reproducing information from the optical card, the internal control means 6 sends a signal representing an information reproducing mode to the driving section control means 5, then the driving section control means 5 provides a signal representing that the next operation is for reproducing information to the shuttle driving means 2 and the optical head control means 4, respectively. In response to this signal, the shuttle driving means 2 serves to drive the shuttle 1 for a given distance at a given constant speed in the track direction; while, the optical head control means 4 serves to change the light intensity of the light beam emitted from the optical head 3 to an intensity for reproducing information. The light beam spot having the intensity for reproducing information traces the relevant information track formed on the optical card with the aid of the movement of the shuttle 1, so that the internal control means 6 reads out information which has been recorded on the optical card thereby. Additionally, the thus read out information is sent to the external control means 7.
By repeating the operations stated above in accordance with the signal supplied from the external control means 7, it is possible to record and/or reproduce information on and/or from the optical card.
However, in such a conventional apparatus, one apparatus can be applied for only one type of optical cards having the same structure. Therefore, in case of an application dealing with a plurality of types of optical cards, it is necessary to provide a plurality of apparatuses corresponding to the types of optical cards to be used, and further necessary to provide a suitable system in each apparatus. But it takes much money, a lot of time and great labor.
If the apparatus were arranged to be able to apply for the plurality of types of optical card, a circuit construction thereof would be very complex, and since elements having great capacitances are required, the apparatus would become large in size. Contrarily, if such an apparatus were used in an application for which only one type of optical card were applied, it would cause an over specification problem, and thus it would be difficult to operate such an apparatus.
Furthermore, in the case optical cards having different arrangement of information track areas or optical cards having different minimum track addresses and different maximum addresses are used in such apparatus, there would be many troubles caused in the apparatus due to the differences; and in the worst case the apparatus would be out of order.